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Alderman 


Bassett 


Alderman 


Eagan 


Alderman 


Moore 


Alderman 


Bent 


Alderman 


Farley 


Alderman 


Moran 


Alderman 


Burns 


Alderman 


Ferguson 


Alderman 


Mullen 


Alderman 


Burden 


Alderman 


Ferrand 


Alderman 


O'ROURKE 


Alderman 


Browne 


Alderman 


Friedlande'r 


Alderman 


Palitz 


Alderman 


Carroll 


Alderman 


Gaynor 


Alderman 


Post 


Alderman 


Cardani 


Alderman 


GiLMORE 


Alderman 


Quinn 


Alderman 


Cassidy 


Alderman 


GOETZ 


Alderman 


ROBITZEK 


Alderman 


Cole 


Alderman 


GUTMAN 


Alderman 


Ryan 


Alderman 


Collins 


Alderman 


Hannon 


Alderman 


SCHMITZ 


Alderman 


Colne 


Alderman 


Haubert 


Alderman Schweickert 


Alderman 


Cox 


Alderman 


Heyman 


Alderman 


Shields 


Alderman 


Crane 


Alderman 


Hilkemeier 


Alderman 


Silberstein 


Alderman Cunningham 


Alderman 


HOGAN 


Alderman Smith 


Alderman 


Curley 


Alderman 


Kenneally 


Alderman Squiers 


Alderman 


Curran 


x\lderman 


Kenney 


Alderman 


Stapleton 


Alderman 


Daly 


Alderman 


McCann 


Alderman 


Stevenson 


Alderman 


Delaney 


Alderman 


McCouRT 


Alderman 


Sullivan 


Alderman 


Diemer 


Alderman 


McGarry 


Alderman 


TOLK 


Alderman 


Dixson 


Alderman 


McGlLLICK 


Alderman Trau 


Alderman 


Donnelly 


Alderman 


McKee 


Alderman 


Walsh 


Alderman 


DOSTAL 


Alderman 


McManus 


Alderman 


Williams 


Alderman 


Drescher 


Alderman 


Martin 


Alderman 


WiRTH 


Alderman 


Dunn 


Alderman 


Molen 


Alderman 


Wise 



The Mayor, Honorable John Purroy Mitchel, presided. 




THE MAYOR — The Very Reverend Bishop Greer will open the meeting 
with prayer. 

BISHOP GREER— 

LMIGHTY God and Heavenly Father, in Whom all creatures live 
and from Whom cometh every good and perfect gift : We 
thank Thee for the goodly heritage which Thou hast given us 
in this favored land, for the civil and religious privileges which 
we enjoy, for the manifold opportunities of human growth 
and development through liberty under law, and for all the multiplied 
manifestations of Thy goodness to us. For these and all Thy blessings 
may we show our thankfulness not merely with the religion of our lips 
but with the devotion of our lives. Especially do we remember in this 
hour the devoted life of Thy servant, Seth Low, who gave himself so 
freely and in so many helpful ways, to the common weal and good; to 
whom no human interest was a foreign thought or care, who labored so 
faithfully, so generously and with such a tireless toil for the welfare of 
his fellow men. May his example in this respect be prized and cherished 
by the people of this community as an inspiration to them to make them 
see and feel the pettiness of selfishness and the nobleness of service. May 
that spirit of service which he embodied and expressed become more and 
more the spirit of this city, to purify and cleanse it of lawlessness and 
viciousness, and help to make it a city which in the whole body of its 
citizenship shall stand for something else and more than a grasping physical 
greed with its blighting entail curse of social strife and envy and discord 
and display; but a city which shall have within it, to inspire it as well as 
to preserve it, those high and pure ideal aims of a mutual helpfulness and 
service which prosperity cannot corrupt nor adversity destroy: a city 
which hath foundations deep and strong, in reverence and righteousness, 
justice, truth and peace, whose builder and maker is God. We ask it in 
the name of Our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. 



Columbia University, recreated and expanded through his genius, stands 
today New York's proudest institution of learning, a monument at once to 
his private generosity and to his executive capacity. 

As a private citizen, Seth Low never refused his time, his labor or his 
substance to a movement that meant the betterment of this city. His interest 
was unflagging, his patience untiring, his zeal unbounded, when the under- 
taking was one to maintain the honor or promote the greatness of his city. 
Indeed, those who knew the activities of Mr. Low in public service and the 
demands upon his time, know that the tax laid upon his strength by these 
self-imposed duties contributed in no small measure to the shortening of a 
life New York could ill afford to lose. 

Seth Low was a staunch, true friend. It was my privilege to see him 
often and to know him well during the past few years. In times of stress, he was 
always ready to respond to a call for advice or aid. Time and again I have 
had his counsel and assistance when I needed them, and they were always 
given with the ready generosity that distinguished him. 

It is fitting and proper that New York should pay this public and official 
tribute to the value of Seth Low's services as Mayor, to his worth as a citizen 
and to his character as a man. 

We have invited here to address this meeting three gentlemen represen- 
tative of the unofficial citizenship of New York. 

The Chair will put a motion to accord the privileges of the floor to Hon. 
George W. Wickersham, a distinguished member of the bar and personal friend 
of Mr. Low. 

The motion was unanimously carried. 




Mr. WICKERSHAM— 

Mr. Mayor and gentlemen of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment 
and of the Board of Aldermen, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

E are assembled here today to solemnly record in the annals 
of this great city a formal and deeply felt appreciation of 
the life and character of a man whose days were spent in this 
community, in unselfish labors for the welfare of his fellow- 
citizens. 

Seth Low was born in the City of Brooklyn on January i8, 1850. His 
father, A. A. Low, was one of the great merchants of the days when Ameri- 
can enterprise carried the American flag onto every sea and into every 
foreign port. The firm of A. A. Low & Company, of which he was the 
head, was noted for high integrity' and unquestioned credit throughout the 
Orient and especially in China, among whose people the merchant class 
from time immemorial have maintained the highest standards of honorable 
dealing. 

After graduation from Columbia College in 1870, Mr. Low became, 
at first a clerk, and later, a partner in that firm. From this parentage and 
early association, Mr. Low was strengthened in those principles of 
impeccable rectitude that characterized him throughout his life. But the 
exactions of business and the allurements of gain did not long absorb his 
interest. 

From his early manhood, the condition of the Government of the 
city in which he lived, which was in large measure the same as that then 
prevailing in most of the large cities of the United States, awakened in him 
a sense of revolt and determination to compel reform. Writing of the 
conditions prevailing at about this time, Mr. James Bryce said in the 
"American Commonwealth": 

"There is no denying that the government of cities is the one 
conspicuous failure of the United States." 

Mr. Low at the age of thirty determined to grapple with the problems 
of City Government, and he flung himself into a contest for the Mayoralty 
of the City of Brooklyn as the candidate of an independent body of 
citizens, endorsed by the Republican party; and in the autumn of 1881 
he was elected Mayor. 

Two years later, in appealing a second time for the suffrages of his 
fellow citizens, Mr. Low could truthfully say: 

"The whole City knows my re-election as Mayor of Brooklyn 
would mean just this: The patronage of the City shall not be used 
by or for any party in the presidential election, national, state or 
local. I shall ask of those who are in the employ of the City just 
one thing, that they discharge their duty to the City by which they 
are paid. If they do that, no enemy can deprive them of their place, 
and if they do not do it, then no friend can keep them in it." 



He was re-elected, and at the end of his second term of office a leading 
New York newspaper of opposite political faith to his, in summing up the 
accomplishments of his administration, declared that 

"He reduced the City debt by $7,000,000. 

"He reformed the system of granting municipal franchises, so 
that during his administration all public franchises were honestly 
got and adequately paid for. 

"He filled all the principal offices with men of character and 
fitness. 

"He disregarded friendships and pulls and sternly dismissed 
all shirkers and incompetents. 

"He completely reformed the public school system and put it 
in charge of a Board of Education of the highest efficiency." 

During the four years of his administration of the government of 
Brooklyn, Mr. Low furnished to his fellow-citizens an object lesson of 
the possibilities of honest, economical and efficient municipal government, 
conducted, not as a political machine, but as a great public business. 
Judged by the two tests which Mr. Bryce says properly may be applied 
to the government of a city, — "What does it provide for the people, and 
what does it cost the people?" — Mr. Low's administration was efficient 
beyond anything that in years had been known either in Brooklyn or 
New York. But he was made to realize the tremendous difficulties in 
attaining good city government created by the constant interference with 
it by legislation at Albany, and by the cumbersome structure of the 
municipal charter, modeled as it was after that of the State, with an 
executive dependent upon a local bi-cameral legislature, and with the 
powers of government diffused and not centralized. 

Years later, in a chapter which Mr. Low contributed to the tenth 
edition of Bryce's "American Commonwealth," he wrote: 

"For many years Americans applied to cities the theories which 
they had successfully embodied in the Governments of their States. 
It is only as some of these theories have broken down, when applied 
to cities, that Americans have begun to realize that they have on 
their hands a problem, new for them, which must be solved, so to 
speak, by rules of its own." 

This solution he strove after throughout all his life. 

Consistently, from his entry into public life until the end, he advo- 
cated the principles of local self-government, the right of the people to 
nominate as well as to elect their officials, and the responsibility of public 
officers to the people. He rightly regarded honest elections as the founda- 
tion-stone of all possible improvement in government, and by his own 
efforts largely contributed to a result which he thus recorded in the 
chapter of the "American Commonwealth" from which I have quoted: 

"Forty years ago it was impossible to have a fair election in New 
York or Brooklyn. Today, under the present system of registry laws, 
every election is held with substantial fairness. * * * 



"It is probable that in another decade Americans will look back 
upon some of the scandals of the present epoch of City Government 
with as much surprise as they now regard the effort to control fires by 
a volunteer fire department, which was insisted upon even in The 
City of New York until within fifty years." 

But the attainment of this great result was yet afar off when, in the 
autumn of 1889, Mr. Low was elected President of Columbia College, and 
thus was led for a decade or more into a different field of public usefulness 
from that he previously had followed. 

The time of his election to that position was a critical period of change 
in the affairs of that great institution. Its needs had outgrown the 
limitations of its buildings, machinery and organization. It was con- 
fronted with the necessity of selecting a new site, providing new buildings 
and determining upon its future aims and ideals. The history of Mr. 
Low's great services to Columbia during the eleven years of his presidency 
may be related more appropriately at another time and in another place. 
It is sufficient to this occasion to note that the selection of the commanding 
site on Morningside Heights and the erection of the noble buildings which 
now so adequately and fitly house that great institution of learning, were 
largely the result of the energy, the perseverance, the contagious enthusiasm 
and the boundless generosity of President Low. His work was crowned 
by the erection at his personal expense of the beautiful Library Building, 
which he presented to the University as a memorial to his father. 

During all this time, Mr. Low never abandoned his interest in an 
attention to the afifairs of the city. Indeed, the guiding principle of his 
work at Columbia was to draw that institution into more intimate relations 
with the life of the great city in which it was placed and to become to its 
increasing and cosmopolitan population an inspiration to higher ideals 
of civic duty and responsibility, and to prove the consistency of highest 
culture with true democracy. When the merger of the City of Brooklyn 
and a number of other adjacent municipalities into the City of New York 
was determined upon, in 1897, Mr. Low was appointed one of the com- 
missioners to prepare the charter for the new and greater city. 

In presenting to the constitutional convention of 1915 his proposed 
home rule measure, Mr. Low spoke of the work of the 1897 charter com- 
mission. He referred to the city's ancient charters, to the vast number 
of laws which had been passed relating to the city, and he said that the 
commission was not called upon to deal with a charter that had been made 
out of hand, but one that was a growth of centuries. A charter such as 
that, he said, could not be torn up by the roots and the city compelled 
to start over again, and the charter commission of 1897, like its predecessors, 
had declined to undertake that responsibility. 

Mr. Low's recognized knowledge of the problems of city government, 
his intimate acquaintance with the laws aiTecting it, acquired through his 
labors in framing the charter; and the tangible evidences of his successful 
administration of the affairs of the great university over which he pre- 
sided, made him the natural choice of many of his fellow-citizens as the 
first Mayor of the Greater City. 



The movement failed of success. But four years later, a fusion of 
many different elements of our citizenship who desired to accomplish 
a divorce of municipal government from partisan politics resulted in Mr. 
LoAv's election. 

The two years of his administration were momentous in the history 
of the city. Business problems affecting its entire future, of a magnitude 
theretofore unparalleled in municipal history, were demanding settlement. 
After many years of doubt and discussion, the economic possibility of rapid 
transit through subways had been determined by the award of the first 
subway contract to John B. McDonald, financed by Mr. August Belmont 
and his associates, in February, 1900. When Mr. Low became Mayor, 
the contract for the extension to Brooklyn was about to be let, and the 
adaptability of electrical motive power to subway uses had been deter- 
mined upon as the solution of the transportation prol)lem. A terrible 
accident, resulting in great loss of life, in the Park Avenue Tunnel, had 
accentuated this need of adopting a motive power other than steam for 
use in the tunnels under city streets and led to the adoption of compre- 
hensive plans for the reconstruction of the Grand Central Terminal and 
the electrification of the lines of railroad of the New York Central and 
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroads leading into it, under 
contracts with the City of exceptional intricacy and involving most difficult 
questions. The great Pennsylvania Railroad system was seeking an 
entrance into Manhattan Island, and planning a connection with Long 
Island, and by a connecting bridge across the East River, for the first 
time to bring New England into direct railroad communication through 
New York City with the south and west. 

The successful negotiation of the contracts for all of these enterprises, 
involving as it did the determination of just and adequate compensation 
for the public franchises granted, and the necessary measure of reserved 
public control to meet future conditions, constituted perhaps the most 
important acts of Mayor Low's administration. Throughout those 
negotiations, with the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners 
and the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, in both of which he was 
a member, he maintained with rare judgment that nice and difficult 
balance between the due protection of the public interest and a just 
recognition of the return to which private capital and enterprise fairly 
are entitled, which can be maintained only by an official conscious of his 
own rectitude and in whom the public puts its trust. 

Both in public and private life, Mr. Low constantly strove to 
bring about a better understanding between employers of labor and their 
employees, and he constantly was chosen as arbitrator of trade disputes. 
He was one of the organizers and an active member, and at the time of his 
death. President, of the National Civic Federation, which he believed 
might be made a vehicle for the solution of manj^ labor problems. He had 
been a delegate to the first Hague Conference in 1899, and he was an 
advocate of the settlement of disputes of all kinds within or between 
nations by arbitration, recognizing that very seldom is either party to 
a controversy wholly and unqualifiedly right in its position, and that 
when such a case arises, an arbitration tribunal properly constituted 



would not hesitate so to declare. He was largely instrumental in pro- 
curing the agreement of the representatives of the great railroad systems 
and of the various organizations of railroad employees, to the terms of 
an amended act to provide for mediation, conciliation and arbitration in 
controversies between interstate railroad companies and their employees, 
known as the Newlands Act, which passed both houses of Congress and 
was approved by President Wilson on July 5th, 1913, with the heartiest 
expressions of approbation by all parties. Mr. Low impressed every 
one with his eminent fairness of view, his broad tolerance, his capacity 
to see both sides of a controversy, and to perceive the grounds for approach 
to a common agreement. One of his latest public services was rendered 
at the request of President Wilson in investigating the complex and con- 
fused questions involved in the labor difificulties in the coal fields of 
Colorado, and his report on those intricate questions, transmitted to the 
Congress by President Wilson on March 8th, 1916, dealing as it does with 
many fundamental problems involved in a great industry deserves careful 
study and embodies suggestions that may be of practical value in the 
determination of other controversies in different fields. 

Mr. Low was in the truest sense of the term a peacemaker, for he 
sought ever to remove the basis for dissension. In this spirit he for years 
devoted himself to the cause of the American Negro. He was a true and 
devoted friend of Booker Washington, whom he regarded as a man chosen 
by God to lead his people in safe and sane ways along the hard but sure 
pathway of industry, thrift and self-discipline to that place of independence 
and respect in the community which acts of legislation cannot secure, 
and of which popular outbursts of narrow prejudice cannot permanently 
deprive. He gave to the service of the Tuskegee Institute devoted thought, 
attention and money. He also was one of the few Americans who took 
pains to inform himself accurately concerning the condition of the 
Armenians and his statesmanlike grasp of world conditions and his broad 
Christian sympathies reached out to embrace the cause of that martyred 
people. 

Among the last public services rendered by Mr. Low was five months 
of work in the Constitutional Convention of 19 15. He received the highest 
number of votes cast by the people for any of the fifteen delegates at large 
to that body, and he fitly was appointed chairman of its Committee on 
Cities. After weeks of inquiry, painstaking study and labor, Mr. Low 
reported from that Committee to the Convention a measure of self-govern- 
ment for the cities of the State, which, after much discussion and amend- 
ment, finally was adopted by a majority vote and submitted, with the 
remainder of the proposed new constitution, to the approval of the people. 
It did not meet the wishes of those who desired the city to be entirely 
independent of the State, nor was it acceptable to those who wish the 
State always to have and, when the city acts contrary to the views of 
those in control of the State Government, exercise full control over the 
city. 

Mr. Low recognized that his measure was an effort to steer between 
Scylla and Charybdis. His explanations satisfied the convention, but did 
not convince the electors. He pointed out the fact that a city is not a little 



state which can by forming a charter take to itself whatever power it 
pleases, neither is it like a state of the union, which has by right all the 
powers that are not given up. He showed that the state uses the city 
in very many particulars as the agent of the state to administer the policies 
of the state as to those matters in which the state is concerned, and thus 
he indicated the difficulties of formulating in workable form, harmonious 
with our constitutional government, the plan of home rule which he 
believed to solve the practical difficulties of the problem as it exists in 
the State of New York. 

He was greatly disappointed at the rejection by a large popular 
majority of the work of the convention to which he had given such con- 
scientious, unstinted devotion, but he comforted himself with the reflection 
that he had given his best thought and most earnest efi"orts to improve 
the Government of his state. 

It would too greatly extend this paper to enumerate all of Mr. Low's 
other public services. He was a trustee of the Carnegie Institution of 
Washington, and of many other charitable and benevolent organizations, 
and in the closing years of his life he enjoyed the great distinction of being 
President of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. 

How can we in the few moments allotted to these exercises cast up 
the account of this full and useful life and briefly characterize its meaning 
to this community? Its strongest quality lay in unselfish devotion to 
the interests of his human brethren. Like Abou Ben Adhem, he would 
be written down as one who loved his fellowmen. But stronger perhaps 
than all other interests, was his love for the City in which he was born, 
in which his life was spent and to the service of which he gave his best. 
May we not think of him now as enjoying the freedom of that greatest 
city. The City of the Great King, whose gates shall not be shut at all, 
for there shall be no night there, and which is lightened bv the Glory of 
God? 



THE MAYOR— 

The Chair will put a motion to accord the privileges of the floor to Hon. 
George McAneny, also a personal friend of Mr. Low and a member of his 
administration, and who, recently a member of these Boards, learned with us 
to value the advice and assistance of Mr. Low. 



The motion was unanimouslv carried. 



Mr. McANENY— 

Mr. Mayor, Members of the Board of Estimate and of the Board of 
Aldermen, Ladies and Gentlemen: 



MT is quite literally true that the whole city mourns Seth Low. 
To those who knew him personally or officially, or who, in 
one way or another, met him actively and knew through close 
contact the excellence of his qualities, the feeling of loss is, 
of course, the more direct and personal. But there are none 
who live within the City of New York who do not share today the advan- 
tages and benefits of conditions that he helped to create; and there are 
none even among the very few who possibly have not known his name, 
who would not, if they were told his story, feel his loss as we do and join 
in our mourning. And so it is that I may say with truth that it is an 
expression of the real heart of the city that its government seeks to make 
through the ceremony of this meeting, and through the action that is to 
be taken. 

I do not believe, and I am sure that no one can believe, that there 
has lived within our generation a man who has been so closely in touch 
with the growth and the development of this city, or whose thought has 
been so closely interwoven with what might be called the city's own thought 
about itself and its affairs. This has been singularly true of Mr. Low, 
and thus will he be remembered. When as a young man, a very young 
man, he became Mayor of Brooklyn, he carried into office the idea that 
was really the guiding impulse of his life — that the agencies of government 
in cities are, or should be, chiefly useful for what they may accomplish 
in improving the working and living conditions of the people who live 
in cities. It was part of the greatness of his own heart, his never ending 
concern for the welfare of his fellow men, his willingness to use constantly 
not merely his own time and energy, but his private fortune, to advance 
the general good. These were the things that actuated him in everything 
he did while in public office. He saw clearly that in order to get, through 
the instrumentality of city government, the sort of service that the people 
are entitled to, government itself must be efficient, that it must be honest, 
and that it must be purposely and even scientifically directed toward 
these ends. 

It was this conviction, no doubt, that led to his enlistment among the 
first of those who advocated the so-called Civil Service Reform, the demand 
for which had heretofore been heard but feebly, but which, in 1883, was 
beginning to make itself distinctly felt. He established it as a principle — 
the first principle — of his administration of the affairs of Brooklyn; and 
largely through what he did, civil service reform found its practical be- 
ginnings in this country. The original state act passed by the Legis- 
lature of 1883 had been permissive in its application to the cities, though 
not as to the state itself. In 1884 the act was made mandatory in its 



application to the cities and the state alike; but while it was still a per- 
missive measure, Mr. Low accepted it and made it the law of Brooklyn 
as, under the statute, he was permitted to do. 

So it was through all of his career here in the Greater City — again 
as Mayor — his insistence that from top to bottom the public service should 
be recruited according to the efficiency and the honesty of purpose of the 
men placed in every office or position, high or low. 

I do not believe that, within our generation, there has lived an 
American who has mastered as thoroughly as did Mr. Low the general 
theory of correct city government, not merely in the choice of means in 
recruiting its personnel, but in everything else that enters into a proper 
scheme of municipal administration. It was a fitting thing that Mr. 
Low should have chanced, at Lord Bryce's invitation, to write that chapter 
in the Tenth Edition of the "American Commonwealth" to which Mr. 
Wickersham refers; for it was he who was to do the most, within his day, 
to answer the friendly protest of the Englishman — that in city govern- 
ment lay our most conspicuous failure. 

It was my good fortune to be associated with Mr. Low in the office 
of the Civil Service Commission during his administration as Mayor of 
of the Greater City. The civil service rules were completely recast at that 
time. There were amendments to the City Charter that vitally affected 
the whole body of civil employees. I can testify to the infinite patience 
with which Mr. Low devoted himself not only to the framing and examina- 
tion of these measures, but to the reorganization of service destined to be 
built upon them; to his patience in matters of detail that most men, 
hurried and busied as he was, would have brushed aside or left to others; 
to his insistence upon the right idea at every turn, and his repugnance 
to every suggestion of compromise so long as it was even possible to get 
what was wholly right. 

Some years later — and again I select an instance of the way Mr. Low 
served the city because it is one of the things of which I have personal 
knowledge — it was my good fortune to be associated with him in the 
negotiation of the contracts for the building and operation of the great 
system of municipal rapid transit that is now developing. Officially, 
of course, the work lay in the hands of those representing the two boards 
officially concerned, the Public Service Commission and the Board of 
Estimate and Apportionment. Mr. Low had been named as Chairman 
of the Joint Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants' 
Association to represent these quasi-public bodies before the negotiating 
committees. It seemed a perfectly natural thing, however, to take him 
literally into our councils. He had been a member of the original Rapid 
Transit Commission. During his term as Mayor of the Greater City, 
he had developed and approved the franchises under which the Pennsyl- 
vania system was brought in and across Manhattan, to Long Island. He 
had been a close student of the whole problem of rapid transit; and he 
well appreciated that, upon the extension of the system already under 
operation, depended the future growth and orderly development of the 
entire metropolitan district. So, as I have said, we brought him into 



our councils, and we kept him there through many months of time. He 
rarely missed one of the many meetings and conferences that we held. 
He figured with us, argued the points, and again and again used his own 
splendid power of persuasion when there were deadlocks on subjects of 
detail. He sat with us until the great work was finished, and the benefit 
we secured from his wisdom and experience and from the breadth of his 
vision, it would be difficult to estimate. He saw and supported the theorj- 
that in building railroads for the city, we were not only laying the founda- 
tion for its physical growth and extension, but that as citizens of today 
we were promoting the ultimate good of the millons of people who are 
to live in the city that is to be. He shared our conclusion that we could 
not treat this great enterprise as commercial merely, but that the lines 
to be laid out and built should form the network of a comprehensive and 
properly coordinated city plan. It was this larger aspect that he constantly 
saw and constantly declared and which, in the end, won. I doubt whether 
anything in Mr. Low's career gave him more satisfaction than did the 
outcome of this issue, and I doubt whether he ever enjoyed more keenly 
his own participation in a matter of public work. Here, too, his con- 
sideration was first for the well being of his fellow men, the relief of the 
sorely congested districts of the old city, the improvement of living and 
working conditions now and in the broad future throughout its bounds, 
and the employment of the agencies of city government to accomplish 
this beneficent and highly sensible purpose. 

The city and city government with him were always first. In 1897, 
for instance. President McKinley asked him to take the mission to Spain 
at a time when our affairs abroad were growing acutely troubled, at a time 
when a great man was needed to speak for us at Madrid. Mr. Low was 
the first to be invited to take the post, but after carefully considering 
what it would mean to him and to his work, his judgment was that he 
ought not to be drawn from city affairs. He remained to fight his fights 
here, and finally to take from his fellow citizens the office for which he 
cared more than he could have cared for any other — the exalted post of 
Mayor. 

We recall — all of us who have served in these two Boards — how fre- 
quently, through the years following his mayoralty, the members of the 
city government continued to have the benefit of his advice, of his sug- 
gestion; how frequently we went to him for counsel; how we regarded 
him not only as the man who had laid firmly the foundations upon which 
the rest of us were to build, but as, in a sense, a sage of city affairs, whose 
word to us at any time or upon anything, we knew, came from a mind 
full of sound and well-matured conviction. 

Mr. Low's term as Mayor was all too brief for the work he had to 
do. He had time for little else than the laying of foundations — but with 
the remarkable group of men he gathered about him as the administrators 
of departmental affairs, and through his own constant personal devotion, 
he reaped results that few thought possible of accomplishment. He 
established principles that will live as long as the city government does. 
In a very literal sense he started the growth and development of the 
government of the city in the right direction. None of those who have 



followed him have failed to profit by what he did then, and none who are 
still to follow can fail so to profit. The debt we owe him in a way can 
never be paid. But we shall long cherish his memory — as a man of true 
greatness of mind and of heart, truly as a great citizen. 



THE MAYOR— 

It is appropriate that the great university to which Seth Low gave so 
many years of his life should be heard from to-day through its present dis- 
tinguished president. 

The Chair will put a motion to accord the privileges of the floor to Presi- 
dent Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University. 

The motion was unanimously carried. 




Mr. butler— 

Your Honor and Gentlemen: 

OU have accorded me a privilege which I greatly value. This 
is the one supremely fitting place and this the one most fitting 
presence in which to speak of Mr. Low and in which to record 
the lessons of his life and of his service. You have heard in 
strong, eloquent words the outline of his life and the sure 

interpretation of the forces that were active in directing his thought and 

his interest. 

The City of New York was the center of his affections and The City 
of New York was that for which he wished to live and to labor. If he 
saw opportunity for service, great constructive service, in rebuilding a 
university, it appealed to him not so much as a problem in education as 
it did as a problem in city building and in making in the Great Metropolitan 
City an institution of learning that should worthily represent the best 
to which a city aspires. If he saw opportunity for public service in 
philanthropy, if he saw it in constructive work in this kind or that, it all 
came back to the problem of the city, to the New York which he loved, 
to the New York in which he was born, to the New York which he wanted 
to help make the great capital of the world's commerce and the world's 
intelligence, and the great guiding force in the policy of this nation and 
of the nations all round about it. 

The relation between the old college in which he found his education 
and the university into which he so powerfully helped to build it, is a 
natural and long standing one. That old college, your Honor, stood for 
a hundred years within stone's throw of this center of the City's official 
life. It has given to this city six of its Mayors — DeWitt Clinton, Ferguson, 
Havemeyer, Hewitt, Low and Mitchel — a series of names extending over 
more than a century, but each one being followed to his task with the 
scholar's pride and the scholar's satisfaction that a group of men devoted 
to letters and science and unofficial public service have been able to have 
a companion and friend step out and take his place as the chief adminis- 
trator of this Metropolitan City. 

This building, so beautiful in itself and so abundant in historic 
memories, is, of course, the center of the City's official life. Out of it 
there radiates in every direction those lines of influence and of aspiration 
which fix and direct the activities that are building the newer New York, 
not the New York of yesterday, not even the New York of today; the 
New York of tomorrow and a hundred years after the day after tomorrow. 
This place is what the Forum was to ancient Rome, the Agora to Athens, 
the place where we symbolize and properly record public service and 
activity that touches the public in any form. How appropriate, then, 
that these two Boards, charged with the City's legislative direction, have 
set aside an hour this afternoon to pay tribute to a great citizen of a great 
city. 

One mistake that we so often make in our thinking and in our appre- 
ciation of men is to assume that all public service must be official service. 



Quite otherwise in a democracy. Our officials are simply those who are 
set apart for a definite time to do a particular thing under limitation of 
law, but public service is that form of activity for the public weal which 
finds its expression in ten thousand ways. Some of it is official; the great 
mass of it is unofficial. It is the work of the man or woman in private 
life who always sees the public interest first, who is clear sighted, generous, 
sympathetic, patient, industrious, in helping to clear the public mind, 
in helping to form and instruct it, in helping to prepare the path for those 
who are our officials to walk in. Every maker of public opinion is an 
unofficial public servant. Public opinion is at once the path in which 
the government walks and the force that holds it up and supports it. Mr. 
Low from early manhood was a powerful agent in making public opinion. 
He made it not only on important occasions when large choices were to 
be made, he made it not only when the eyes of men were fixed upon him 
because of the conspicuous post that he occupied, but he made it in season 
and out of season by urging upon others that consideration, that calm 
deliberation, that patient inquiry, and that sort of public spirit which 
make us all one in civic pride and in civic patriotism. 

We Americans are so apt to emphasize our points of difference and 
so ready to overlook our points of agreement. Important as the points 
of difference are this year and another, on this question and on that, our 
points of agreement are many times more important and more numerous. 
We are in agreement, every one of us, as to what will make this city happy 
and prosperous and just and tender and healthy and serene; and every 
citizen, official or unofficial, who brings to the expression of that con- 
viction, which we shall share, those traits of character and of mind, of 
devotion and of industry, of high-mindedness and of patience that char- 
acterized Mr. Low, every such citizen is following in his footsteps, is 
learning his lesson, is putting a stone upon his unseen but undying 
monument. 

The city, as Martin Luther told the Burgomasters of the German 
nation nearly 400 years ago, is not made of walls or guns or material success; 
it is made of its men and women, and it is out of men and women who 
care for this city, who will labor for this city in season and out, and who 
will have an ideal of what this city can be made, it is from them that we 
build permanent monuments to those who have served us and gone before. 

So your Honor, we are building, each in his own way, a monument 
to our great public servants, those who have been in high office and those 
who have walked quietly in unofficial life, and when we build it, each by 
his own public act and public service, however inconspicuous, we are 
adding to the memory and increasing the significance of the life of Seth 
Low. 



THE MAYOR— 

The Chair will now entertain resolutions for adoption. 



PRESIDENT DOWLING— 

Mr. Mayor, I oflfer the following resolution: 



C^^^jJHEREAS, in the death of Seth Low, the City of New York 
wjfrvMft .1 has lost one of the greatest of its citizens, and the people of 
^ll^|w^ 1 the city one of the wisest and most devoted of their leaders; 
V^^^^^^ and 

Whereas, Mr. Low through his active public life, twice 
as Mayor of the City of Brooklyn, as a member of the Commission that 
brought into consolidation the communities that now compose the Greater 
New York, and as Mayor, in a critical period of its development, of the 
greater city he helped to erect, rendered services of unequaled constructive 
value and of historic importance, not only to the city as a municipal cor- 
poration, but to all of its people; and 

Whereas, the city has been enriched not only through the quality of 
Mr. Low's service as its Executive, the principles of administration that he 
established, the precedents for high-minded and disinterested official 
conduct, the traditions of rightful usage of public trust, the firm and 
strong foundations he laid for those who were to build after him; but 
by his many public services of other character; his forceful part in the 
solution of the problems of city planning and of rapid transit; his up- 
building of the great University, that is now one of the city's rarest adorn- 
ments and priceless possessions; his leadership in the Chamber of Com- 
merce, filling there, as President, a post his father had filled before him; 
his part in the working out of social and industrial problems of constant 
interest and concern to this city and to others, the wisdom and fairness of his 
frequent moderation in the difficulties that flow from differences of position 
and of understanding between employer and employee; and his able re- 
presentation of the city in the Constitutional Convention of the State; and 

Whereas, in his administration of private wealth given so largely 
for public purposes, Mr. Low has left another high example of noble living 
and of admirable citizenship; and 

Whereas, in the councils of the city government he was a frequent 
and always helpful adviser, winning in his public relationships, as he did 
in private, through personal grace and charm and the warmth of his 
sympathy the confidence and the high regard of all with whom he had to do; 
therefore, be it 

Resolved, that the Board of Estimate and Apportionment and the 
Board of Aldermen in joint session assembled, the Mayor presiding, con- 
stituting the government of the City of New York, hereby record the 
city's deep appreciation of Mr. Low's services, as public officer and as 
citizen, and the deep sense of public bereavement with which the announce- 
ment of his death has been received. Few men have served the city as 
Mr. Low did; none will be remembered with greater gratitude or affection. 

The resolution was unanimously adopted by a rising vote. 

The Chair declared the meeting adjourned. 

Joseph Haag, 
P. J. Scully, Secretary of the Board of 

City Clerk and Clerk of Estimate and Apportionment, 

the Board of Aldermen. 



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